Early on the morning of August 21st of this year (2017) there is a full solar eclipse, visible across most of the United States.

The path of totality starts off the coast of South Carolina, and races across the lower 48 states, making itself visible in Oregon around 9:30-10:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time, depending on where the viewer is located on the path of totality.

So, where do you go to view this magnificent, once (or if your lucky, twice) in a lifetime event?

Xavier Jubier's excellent interactive Google Map of the path of totality is a wonderful planning tool, as it overlays the moon's shadow (path of totality) over an Google Map that you can pan and zoom, and click on a point to pop-up a window that shows the exact start/finish time of the event (in UTC - subtract 7 hours in you are in the Pacific Time zone) at the location you choose.

Once you figure out where you are going to be, what can you expect to see?

During a total solar eclipse, if you are underneath the path of totality, the moon passes in front of the sun, and it's shadow falls on the earth and obscures almost all of the sun's light. If you have a long lens pointed at the Sun, you may see solar prominences, as will "Bailey's Beads" which are the refractions of sunlight around topography of the moon.

If you are shooting the landscape, with the sun in the frame, you will see an eerie dusk-like sky, with stars and planets, and a near-total lack of shadows on the ground.

Typically I would go through my archives and post some sample images, but other than the above image made in 2012, I have never been lucky enough to photograph a solar eclipse, let alone a TOTAL solar eclipse. So, I will look to the excellent work of my colleagues to show some examples of what is possible, to get your creative ideas flowing:

Eclipse, Svalbard, Dr. Miloslav Druckmüller

Alaska Airlines Flight 870 (2016)

Thanakrit Santikunaporn

Geoff Sims

Beware when freviewing the images that are out there, there is a LOT of fakery. If you see an INCREDIBLE image that looks too good to be true, it probably is.

This year's Mountain Workshops have come and gone, and I couldn't be more proud of what my two students were able to achieve in a week's time.

This year, my timelapse class consisted of Mindy Miller, staff photographer for the University of Florida, and Lex Selig, Western Kentucky University Photojournalism student. Neither of them had shot a timelapse prior to coming to Mountain Workshops in Paducah.

I love being a part of Mountain every year, it's one of my favorite places to teach for so many reasons. The faculty and staff are all incredible folks, and it's an honor and a pleasure to gather with them in a different town in Kentucky each year to record the stories of the town and it's people. At Mountain, the atmosphere is always electric, and the enthusiasm and dedication to top-notch storytelling are always infectious.

Check out Mindy and Lex's timelapse project here:

Huge thanks to the major sponsors of the Workshops, Nikon and Canon: Mary, Jeff, Andy, and Kris are the best in the business, all of you always go way above and beyond to get everyone at Mountain incredible gear to use in our storytelling projects.

It was one week ago tonight I witnessed this incredible sunset over Black Rock City / Burning Man, as the clouds burst into color in between gusts of wind that lifted enormous plumes of dust off the playa and blew them over to smash into me on Old Razorback mountain.

The Black Rock has a way of making sure you know that it is always in charge. I couldn't help but laugh as the dust followed me up the mountain despite my efforts to get away, as if the playa hadn't covered me and everything I brought in enough dust over the preceding two weeks spent on the playa with The Space Whale crew assembling a big whale for everyone to enjoy. Luckily the dust abated and I was able to shoot some panoramas, timelapses, and this amazing sunset before falling asleep, exhausted, on this rocky mountaintop.After dark fell, lasers from Mayan Warrior (thanks for supporting the Whale!) were painting the sagebrush at my feet, and in the morning, I could actually make out the tracks that Lee Burridge was playing on Robot Heart at sunrise in the still air, ten miles away. The sea of tiny people dancing in the morning light was one of the most beautiful things I've seen in all my years in the desert.

Huge thanks to Kelsey, Lost Machine Andy, Matt, Claire, Lindsays, Lenora, and the rest of the Whale crew for bringing me out of BM retirement and allowing me to help out with your amazing project. Your collective dedication was a much needed reminder that not everyone gets paid at Burning Man, not everyone is rich and living in comfort and luxury, and that dedicated, motivated people are still willing to come together and suffer greatly to make art for no reward whatsoever other than the experience itself. I can't wait to share all the images Michael Okimoto and I made for you all working your hearts out. I'm never going to your stupid dirt rave again.

Ever wonder how images like the above were made? There are two main ways: 1)one VERY long exposure, or 2) stacking several long exposures. In this tutorial post, I'll go through the planing, strategy, and technique of the second option - stacking.

First up is planning (see my post on that here). After you determine the location, the right night, ascertain whether or not you have do-able weather, and select where to place your camera, then comes the fun part - guessing the exposure length, aperture, and ISO, and subsequently figuring out how many you need to take. Looking at your sensor size + lens combo should give you a good idea of how many frames of a particular length you need to make if your goal is a star circle (facing N to Polaris). I have a whole separate post on this here. In this post, I want to focus on the post-processing portion of making an image like the above.

So you have your frames, and (hopefully) your "plate" exposure that you shot for the foreground. Now what?

Step 1: get organized by placing all frames in your stack in a unique Lightroom Collection.

Step2: Synchronize ALL develop settings across EACH star trail frame so they are exactly the same.

Step3: Separately develop your "plate" frame to taste.

Step 4: Select all frames in your stack in Lightroom's filmstrip along the bottom of the screen. Right-click on one of the photos, and choose "Edit In / Open as Layers in Photoshop"

Step 5: In Photoshop, drag the plate layer to the bottom of your layers, if it's not there already.

Step 6: In the layers panel, select ALL star trails layers, and change the Layer Blending Mode to either "Lighten" or "Screen." Choose one based on which looks better - if shot on a moonless night with dark sky and bring star trails, I find "Lighten" to work better. This should allow all the trails to add up and create your finished blend OF THE SKY ONLY.

Step 8: Add a layer mask to the merged star rails layer. Use regular mask-painting techniques with different brushes, hardnesses, opacity, etc. to cover over the foreground of the star trails layer with black paint (remember: white reveals, black conceals). The black paint on the mask will "conceal" or cover up the part of that layer, allowing the part of the next-lowest layer (in this case your foreground plate) to come through to the top in your photograph. Take care to make the blend look realistic.

If you find gaps in your trails, they will need to be dealt with. Stephen Christensen of the Star Cricle Academy has an excellent post on how to manage this scenario - here.

That's it in a nutshell! Any questions, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email.